The Navy will send three aircraft carriers to waters off Guam for large-scale exercises late this summer, the outgoing U.S. Pacific Fleet commander said.The Valiant Shield war games will resemble exercises held near the U.S. territory last June. Those brought together some 28 ships, 280 airplanes and 22,000 troops.Adm. Gary Roughead, announcing the exercises in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, said the Navy learned a great deal from last year's large-scale exercises and wanted to hold similar drills again to improve on some of the tactics used."It was very important I think to take that information and while everything was still fresh to say let's go ahead and do things again," Roughead said.The war games will only involve U.S. troops but will include forces from different services. The Marine Corps and Air Force participated in last year's drills.... http://www.cnn.com

Willie Gary, a Florida attorney whose personal Boeing 737 has an 18-carat gold bathroom sink, wants Motorola Inc. to pay him $11,000 an hour for his work on a lawsuit against the company. That's the least he should receive, Gary says. In court papers, he says he will ask a judge this week for twice as much, or $22,000 an hour, because Motorola violated a court order in defending the suit. At the $11,000 rate, Gary would receive $24.3 million and other plaintiffs' attorneys $12.5 million. While lawyers sometimes take in the equivalent of $11,000 an hour in contingency fees when they win a big case, the wrinkle in the Gary request is that his client didn't win. The trial in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ended with a hung jury. ``This is outrageous,'' Paul Alfieri, a spokesman for Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola, said in an e-mailed statement. Motorola is the second-biggest maker of mobile phones behind Finland's Nokia Oyj. ...http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a85sK7ysG5QQ&refer=exclusive

Republican leaders yesterday sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to immediately cut short the House's two-week spring recess and finish a war-funding bill. "Our troops need this funding, and they need it soon," said the letter signed by nine top Republicans, including House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "Every day we don't fund our troops is a day their ability to fight this war is weakened," they said. Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, called the letter "overblown rhetoric" and said a spending bill will reach President Bush before money is depleted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Coming from the Republicans, who ran the 'do-nothing' Congress, this letter is a cheap political stunt," Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said. While she was in the minority party, Mrs. Pelosi frequently sent letters to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, calling for shortened congressional recesses....http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070410-120400-6936r.htm

A Taliban-style Islamic court in the Pakistani capital has issued a fatwa against a female minister for posing in an "obscene manner" with French paraglider pilots, a top cleric said yesterday. The religious decree against Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar was the first to be made by the self-styled court at the hard-line Red Mosque in Islamabad since mullahs announced its formation on Friday. The fatwa, combined with threats by the mosque's leader to unleash a wave of suicide bombers if the government tries to shut down the court, have fueled concern over the creeping "Talibanization" of Pakistan. "The muftis [judges] issued a decree against Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar when their attention was drawn toward some pictures in which she appeared in an obscene and objectionable manner with paraglider pilots in Paris," the mosque's deputy leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi said. ...http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20070409-104841-5071r.htm

Tens of thousands of Shi'ites -- a sea of women in black abayas and men waving Iraqi flags -- rallied yesterday to demand that U.S. forces leave their country. Some ripped apart American flags and tromped across a Stars and Stripes rug. The protesters, including some Iraqi soldiers in uniform, marched about three miles between the holy cities of Kufa and Najaf to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. In the capital, streets were silent and empty under a hastily imposed 24-hour driving ban. Radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered the march as a show of strength to Washington and to Iraq's establishment Shi'ite ayatollahs. Sheik al-Sadr, who disappointed followers hoping he might appear after months in seclusion, has pounded his anti-American theme in a series of written statements. The most recent statement was released Sunday, when the cleric called on his Mahdi Army militia to redouble efforts to expel U.S. forces and ...http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20070410-124728-7579r.htm

Serbia's war crimes court has jailed four Serb paramilitaries who were filmed as they shot dead six captured young Bosnian Muslims. The Scorpions unit leader and one of his accomplices were given 20 years each - the others 13 and five years. A fifth man was cleared of the murder which took place during the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in July 1995. This was the first trial in Serbia to deal with the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys around Srebrenica. It was also the biggest war crimes trial of Serbs by Serbs to date. But relatives of the victims expressed disappointment that the maximum sentences - of 40 years - had not been handed down. Prosecutors said the five suspects were members of a paramilitary unit called the Scorpions....http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6540645.stm